The rose diagram shows only the swells directed at Apollo Bay that coincided with light winds or offshore conditions over a normal August and is based upon 2976 predictions, one every 3 hours. The direction of the spokes show where quality surf generating swell comes from. Five colours show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red represents the largest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell occurs.

The diagram suggests that the dominant swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was WSW, whereas the the most common wind blows from the WNW. The chart at the bottom shows the same thing but without direction information. For example, swells larger than 1.5 feet (0.5m) coincided with good wind conditions 62% of the time, equivalent to 19 days. Expect open water swells to exceed >3m (>10ft) 33% of the time (10 days). Taking into account the proportion of these swells that coincided with forecast offshore winds, and given the fact that Apollo Bay is slightly protected from open water swells, we estimate that clean surf can be found at Apollo Bay about 62% of the time and that surf is spoilt by onshore wind 37% of the time. This is means that we expect 31 days with waves in a typical August, of which 19 days should be surfable.

IMPORTANT: Beta version feature! Swell heights are open water values from NWW3. There is no attempt to model near-shore effects. Coastal wave heights will generally be less, especially if the break does not have unobstructed exposure to the open ocean.